An elderly friend who grew up near Peoria, IL during the Depression said that when they drained a reservoir for repairs, they found 17 drowned infants. I knew a woman once whose baby had the fatal Tay Sachs disease. She suffered along with her child for four years until it died. Then she had her next infant tested prenatally and it was OK. I asked what she would have done if it was not OK. She said going through an ordeal like that again would have killed her so she would have had an abortion.
That’s a shame, though I always wonder when babies’ remains are found like that if there was a pregnancy that would have been scandalous (incest or such). I doubt there’d be 17 though; that’s a shame. I would have thought women back then would be more reluctant to do that, and I would have thought there would be more resources for abandoned babies.
My wife was told to have testing done on one of our children, and she refused (there was a risk to the baby inside); the doctors were furious, but she made clear that abortion wasn’t an option regardless of any testing. We both aged a lot waiting for the baby, and everything was fine (thank God).